Category Archives: 1917-1920

City of UFA: Then and Now

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blue on pushkina 500x312 City of UFA: Then and Now

A merchant’s house. Early twenties.

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A her­itage build­ing now

The city of Ufa, the cap­i­tal of Bashkiria, is a town with the pop­u­la­tion of just over a mil­lion, at about 1500 km dis­tance from Moscow. It is beau­ti­fully set at the con­flu­ence of the Belaya and Ufa rivers, on low hills to the west of South­ern Urals. The city was founded in 1574 at the orders of Ivan the Ter­ri­ble, and the name mean­ing “small” in Tur­kic. It is a well kept city with lots of green­ery, wide alleys, parks and plen­ti­ful his­toric buildings.

Today’s post is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from our usual for­mat, as the mod­ern pic­tures of the city are, well, mod­ern and not of the Soviet epoch. It is still nice to see, how­ever, how the city has been chang­ing over the past hun­dred years  —  and the old pho­tographs are still full of life and very easy on the eye.

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Best of Winter 2009 – 2010

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Mil­i­tary Dis­charge Hand­made Scrap Book and Comics Album

11 365x500 Best of Winter 2009 2010

You’re in the army now

The com­pul­sory two years of mil­i­tary ser­vice was a rite of pas­sage for every Soviet guy. When one turned eigh­teen — unless for sick­ness or injury — it was time to be called in for the mil­i­tary life — two years in the bar­racks. The guys usu­ally bonded well and dur­ing their spare time cre­ated so called “Dis­charge Albums” — like scrap­books, they were full of pho­tos, songs lyrics, quick notes from the bud­dies etc.

Slava Kurilov: Alone at Sea. An Unbe­liev­able Way to Escape the Iron Curtain

kurilov2 Best of Winter 2009 2010

The only per­son to escape the Iron Cur­tain by swimming.

By job he was an oceanog­ra­pher, by heart he was a dreamer, by nation­al­ity he was a cit­i­zen of the planet Earth — in short, he was an extra­or­di­nary guy. Yet his per­sonal file in the USSR was stamped as “not wor­thy of an exit visa” so he was not allowed to leave the coun­try, even if it was for a hol­i­day. So in Decem­ber, 1974 he jumped a cruise boat “The Soviet Union” off the coast of the Philip­pines islands — and he swam to freedom.With no food or drink, no swim­ming equip­ment apart from flips and gog­gles, he swam to the shores about a hun­dred kilo­me­ters for three days — com­pletely alone at sea.

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21+ Depressing Photos of Post-Revolutionary Russia by Arkady Shaikhet

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When the new Soviet coun­try was born, the peo­ple were promised a won­der­ful future under the social­ism — just a few more years, the bill­boards boasted — and we’ll live in a glo­ri­ous state. How­ever the early days were more than gloomy: the  run­down econ­omy, dis­ori­ented soci­ety, the reek of fear and uncer­tainty — and that clearly can be seen through the pho­tos of a promi­nent Soviet pho­tog­ra­pher Arkady Shaikhet.

This col­lec­tion of pho­tos starts off with nice, clearcut images of what the coun­try was por­trayed as by the media and pro­pa­ganda — and pro­gresses to a unsweet­ened world of the sim­ple folk, vagrants, and peas­ants. Please let us know if there is a photo below that has touched your heart — we always value your feedback.

photoshare 003 500x373 21+ Depressing Photos of Post Revolutionary Russia by Arkady Shaikhet

Gym­nasts. Red Square. 1924

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The Fearsome Threesome – Lenin and His Lovebirds

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437px Lenin in Paris Poster Lenin v Parizhe Youtkhevitch Yutkevich Claude Jade 364x500 The Fearsome Threesome – Lenin and His Lovebirds

Paris, city of love, brought them all together. A Russ­ian movie of 1981.

The offi­cial his­tory often misses a very impor­tant and inter­est­ing point in the course of the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion – not every­body knows that Vladimir Lenin, a for­mi­da­ble mind behind the Great Octo­ber Patri­otic Rev­o­lu­tion and the leader of all com­mu­nists, had less than straight­for­ward love life – apart from a wife, he had a mis­tress – and not only that, these two women knew each other and got on very well!

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Moscow Winters, Fragments of the 20th Century.

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Here is a fine col­lec­tion of images of Moscow win­ters, dat­ing from 1920s till 1991. Sadly many places por­trayed on these pho­tographs are gone now, just like the Soviet Union itself, yet lest we for­get.  Please read on to see the image of the first set of traf­fic lights in Moscow CBD in late 1930s, which was oper­ated by a spe­cially trained per­son; or the largest fresh­wa­ter out­door  swim­ming pool in the world -  as well as peo­ple, wooden houses, old boule­vards cov­ered with the vir­gin snow.

0 1f292 1f8e2207 XL 500x331 Moscow Winters, Fragments of the 20th Century.

1925. A pri­vate house on the bank of the Tarakanovka river

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We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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If we were to pick one  the most con­fus­ing ques­tion from the his­tory of the USSR, no doubt it would have to be the Christ­mas date issue. Despite the fact that the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church branches out of the Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity, the tra­di­tional day to observe Christ­mas is dif­fer­ent to the rest of the Chris­t­ian world. The Russ­ian Christ­mas day is cel­e­brated on the 7th of Jan­u­ary, not Decem­ber 25th, and it is not easy to explain why it is so.

The xpla­na­tion comes from the two dif­fer­ent cal­en­ders. In the Tsarist Rus­sia Christ­mas was cel­e­brated on Decem­ber 25th, althouth there was a dif­fer­ence in days — as the Gre­go­rian cal­en­dar was accepted after the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917 — on 24 Jan­u­ary 1918 the new Soviet gov­ern­ment  issued a decree that Wednes­day, 31 Jan­u­ary 1918 was to be fol­lowed by Thurs­day, 14 Feb­ru­ary 1918. But the Church, due to its open con­flict with the newly pro­nounced state, decided to keep the day where it was — and so ever since Christ­mas is cel­e­brated in early Jan­u­ary. Go figure.

Nev­er­the­less, the team of Realussr is delighted to announce our very first fes­tive sea­son together — we are a very young blog yet we have ambi­tions to grow and pros­per. We were only born in June/July this year, yet we see a won­der­ful life ahead of us. And today we present you with a present — a col­lec­tion of Soviet Christmas/New Year’s Eve post­cards. Please click on the flash bit below, zoom in and explore.  A bunch of warm wishes from all of us! Thank you.

If you would like to learn more please do not hes­i­tate to click the fancy carousel. Thanks for being with us.